[News] Israel Repurposes Old Nakba Myths to Justify the Massacre in Gaza

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/05/15/israel-repurposes-old-nakba-myths-to-justify-todays-massacre-in-gaza/ 



  Israel Repurposes Old Nakba Myths to Justify the Massacre in Gaza

by Jonathan Cook <https://www.counterpunch.org/author/jonathan-cook/> - 
May 15, 2018
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/
Nazareth/

On Monday and Tuesday, Palestinians commemorate the anniversary of the 
Nakba, or catastrophe, their mass expulsion and dispossession 70 years 
ago as the new state of Israel was built on the ruins of their homeland. 
As a result, most Palestinians were turned into refugees, denied by 
Israel the right to return to their homes.

Tens of thousands turned out on Monday in the occupied territories to 
protest against seven decades of Israel’s refusal to make amends or end 
its oppressive rule.

The move on Monday of the US embassy to Jerusalem, a city under 
belligerent occupation, has only inflamed Palestinian grievances – and a 
sense that the West is still conspiring in their dispossession.

The focus of the protests is Gaza, where unarmed Palestinians have been 
massing every Friday since late March at the perimeter fence that 
encages two million of them. For their troubles, they have faced a hail 
of live ammunition, rubber bullets and clouds of tear gas. Dozens had 
been killed and many hundreds more maimed, including children.

Early reports on Monday suggested that Gaza’s demonstrators were being 
massacred by the Israeli army. Amnesty International called the events a 
“horror show”.

But for more than a month, Israel has been working to manage western 
perceptions of the protests – and its response – in ways designed to 
discredit the outpouring of anger from Palestinians. In a message all 
too readily accepted by some western audiences, Israel has presented the 
protests as a “security threat”.

Israeli officials have even argued before the country’s high court that 
the protesters lack any rights – that army snipers are entitled to shoot 
them, even if facing no danger – because Israel is supposedly in a 
“state of war” with Gaza, defending itself.

On Sunday night the Israeli air force dropped leaflets across Gaza 
warning Palestinians not to go near fence. “The Israel Defense Forces is 
determined to defend Israel’s citizens and sovereignty against Hamas’ 
attempts at terrorism under cover of violent riots,” the leaflets said. 
“Don’t get near the fence and don’t take part in Hamas’ show, which 
endangers you.”

Many Americans and Europeans, worried about an influx of “economic 
migrants” flooding into their own countries, readily sympathise with 
Israel’s concerns – and its actions.

Until now, the vast majority of Gaza’s protesters have been peaceful and 
made no attempt to break through the fence.

But Israel claims that Hamas has exploited this week’s protests in Gaza 
to encourage Palestinians to storm the fence. The implication is that 
the protesters have been trying to cross a “border” and “enter” Israel 
illegally.

The truth is rather different. There is no border because there is no 
Palestinian state. Israel has made sure of that. Palestinians live under 
occupation, with Israel controlling every aspect of their lives. In 
Gaza, even the air and sea are Israel’s domain.

Meanwhile, the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their former 
lands – now in Israel – is recognised in United Nations Resolutions.

Nonetheless, Israel has been crafting a dishonest counter-narrative ever 
since the Nakba, myths that historians scouring the archives have slowly 
exploded.

One claim – that Arab leaders told the 750,000 Palestinian refugees to 
flee in 1948 – was in fact invented by Israel’s founding father, David 
Ben Gurion. He hoped it would deflect US pressure on Israel to honour 
its obligations to allow the refugees back.

Even had the refugees chosen to leave during the heat of battle, rather 
than wait to be expelled, it would not have justified denying them a 
right to return when the fighting finished. It was that refusal that 
transformed flight into ethnic cleansing.

In another myth unsupported by the records, Ben Gurion is said to have 
appealed to the refugees to come back.

In truth, Israel defined Palestinians who tried to return to their lands 
as “infiltrators”. That entitled Israeli security officials to shoot 
them on sight – in what was effectively execution as a deterrence policy.

Nothing much has changed seven decades on. A majority of Gaza’s 
population today are descended from refugees driven into the enclave in 
1948. They have been penned up like cattle ever since. That is why the 
Palestinians’ current protests take place under the banner of the March 
of Return.

For decades, Israel has not only denied Palestinians the prospect of a 
minimal state. It has carved the Palestinian territories into a series 
of ghettos – and in the case of Gaza, blockaded it for 12 years, choking 
it into a humanitarian catastrophe.

Despite this, Israel wants the world to view Gaza as an embryonic 
Palestinian state, supposedly liberated from occupation in 2005 when it 
pulled out several thousand Jewish settlers.

Again, this narrative has been crafted only to deceive. Hamas has never 
been allowed to rule Gaza, any more than Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian 
Authority governs the West Bank.

But echoing the events of the Nakba, Israel has cast the protesters as 
“infiltrators”, a narrative that has left most observers strangely 
indifferent to the fate of Palestinian youth demonstrating for their 
freedom.

Once again, the executions of recent weeks, supposedly carried out by 
the Israeli army in self-defence, are intended to dissuade Palestinians 
from demanding their rights.

Israel is not defending its borders but the walls of cages it has built 
to safeguard the continuing theft of Palestinian land and preserve 
Jewish privilege.

In the West Bank, the prison contracts by the day as Jewish settlers and 
the Israeli army steal more land. In Gaza’s case, the prison cannot be 
shrunk any smaller.

For many years, world heads of state have castigated Palestinians for 
using violence and lambasted Hamas for firing rockets out of Gaza.

But now that young Palestinians prefer to take up mass civil 
disobedience, their plight is barely attracting attention, let alone 
sympathy. Instead, they are criticised for “breaching the border” and 
threatening Israel’s security.

The only legitimate struggle for Palestinians, it seems, is keeping 
quiet, allowing their lands to be plundered and their children to be 
starved.

Western leaders and the public betrayed the Palestinians in 1948. There 
is no sign, 70 years on, that the West is about to change its ways.

/A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi./

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